The Copy without Original

The Copy without Origin [working title]

The Copy without Origin is inspired from the concept of Hyperreality, the audio-visual, dance experiment explores our interdependent relationship to technology, virtual space, and online identity.

The experiment uses brain scanning technology (EEG) to control graphical musical scores based on the mathematics of the natural world. Projected onto an evolving screen created from the flow and form of a Butoh dancer, these graphic scores become the musical notation for instrumentalists to create an improvisational soundscape which inspires the dancer’s movements.

This project is being developed during ASMbly and created specifically for Unit 4 at the St Johns Centre.

Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an entire area with no overlap or gap. If we moved the whole pattern by the length of a tile (translated it) or rotated it by 90 degrees, we will get the same pattern. That’s because in this case, the whole tiling has the same symmetry as a single tile. But imagine tiling a bathroom with pentagons instead of squares – it’s impossible, because the pentagons won’t fit together without leaving gaps or overlapping one another.

In the 1970s, physicist Roger Penrose discovered that it was possible to make a pattern from two different shapes with the angles and sides of a pentagon. This looks the same when rotated through 72-degree angles, meaning that if you turn it 360 degrees full circle, it looks the same from five different angles. We see that many small patches of patterns are repeated many times in this pattern. For example in the graphic above, the five-pointed orange star is repeated over and over again. But in each case these stars are surrounded by different shapes, which implies that the whole pattern never repeats in any direction. Therefore this graphic is an example of a pattern that has rotational symmetry but no translational symmetry.

Butoh (舞踏Butō) is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo. The art form is known to “resist fixity”[1] and be difficult to define; notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed the formalisation of butoh with “distress”.[2] Common features of the art form include playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and it is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion. However, with time butoh groups are increasingly being formed around the world, with their various aesthetic ideals and intentions. [WIKIPEDIA]

In semiotics and postmodernism, hyperreality is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies. Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins.[1] It allows the co-mingling of physical reality with virtual reality (VR) and human intelligence with artificial intelligence (AI).[1]Individuals may find themselves, for different reasons, more in tune or involved with the hyperreal world and less with the physical real world.

The postmodern semiotic concept of “hyperreality” was contentiously coined by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation. Baudrillard defined “hyperreality” as “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality;”[2] hyperreality is a representation, a sign, without an original referent. Baudrillard believes hyperreality goes further than confusing or blending the ‘real’ with the symbol which represents it; it involves creating a symbol or set of signifiers which represent something that does not actually exist, like Santa Claus. Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more.

Collaborators

The Frozen Music Collective is a music and multimedia collective founded in 2014 working at the intersection of cutting edge interactive technology and performance. Our research explores what it means to be connected in a world where technology is rapidly evolving. We have pioneered software and techniques to allow the human brain to control the physical and virtual world. We are interested in working in collaboration with Art + Music Festivals, Institutions, Special schools + brands to design and create new art pieces or a reworking of a previous installation or performance.

Dave Lynch is a pioneering artist, creative director and inventor working Internationally at the intersection of moving image, interactive installation, performance and projection. His practice combines elements of art, science, military, maker and media cultures as part of its tactics, technologies and production. Lynch’s research investigates models of cross-disciplinary collaborative practice through play and doing. In 2015, Lynch achieved a world first by projecting moving images onto clouds from aircraft as reported in New Scientist, The Smithsonian, RT.com and many more. His works have been featured on BBC 2, Wired.co.uk, The New York Times and VICE magazine.

Christophe de Bézenac is a musician, researcher and lecturer based in the UK. After studying at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, he completed a PhD which examined perceptual ambiguity in music, taking an ecological approach (University of Leeds, 2007). During this time he became actively involved in the European experimental jazz/music scene. He regularly performs at international festivals/venues and lectures in improvised music at HE institutions. Christophe’s research interests have also led him to work in the field of cognitive neuroscience, more specifically, examining the neural correlates of ambiguity between self and other in perception and action. Whilst completing 2nd doctorate (University of Liverpool) by publication in clinical neuroimaging (using fMRI and EEG to examine agency mechanisms in health and psychosis), Christophe works with The Frozen Music Collective, using of brain scanning and cutting edge audiovisual processing techniques to develop multimedia performances and installations.

Mr WobblyHead(AKA Paul J ABBOTT) is an composer and experimental performer. He holds a PhD in composition from the University of York and has a significant back catalogue of recorded and performed worth both for fixed media and live settings. www.mrwobblyhead.co.uk

The Northern Contemporary Collective was formed in 2017 by some of Yorkshires finest young professional musicians. The aim of the collective is to bring innovative and collaborative performances across the creative arts, challenging audience perception and enhancing imagination through various art forms. The wide range of musical backgrounds and education gives for an incredibly exciting and diverse ensemble that are able to work in many genres.

Alison Grace draws from her experience in choreography, Butoh dance, clinical psychology, group and interpersonal dynamics to practice and share tools towards creative, expressive, transformative experiences of the body and self. Her work focuses on the relationship between breath, movement, internal body image, imagination and expression. Alison Grace is a trained Clinical Psychologist with a Masters Degree from the University of Brussels (U.L.B) and choreographer with a First degree from Dartington College of Arts.

http://www.alisongrace.co.uk/

Charlotte Hubbard is a Yorkshire based makeup and special effects artist working in media, photography, fashion, film and performance. With a background in psychology, She is interested in the interplay between the conceptual design and creation of characters and how to guide performers through their transformation.

Dom Hopkinson’s work analyses the human capacity for pattern recognition, and how this process seems to be innate within us. Hopkinson wants to better understand and describe how the underlying mathematics of natural structures and forms, when abstracted by his creative process, are still fundamentally readable and are capable of being recognised as objects that contain levels of order and beauty. What is it that drives this process of understanding and recognition in a person with no specialist training in either the arts or science? The role of the irrational number 1.61803…( or phi, the golden ratio), and it’s links to platonic geometry, closest packing theory and aperiodic tiling in two and three dimensions are all integral to the research.Why does this particular number appear in such a wide range of problems and exert such a huge level of pattern creation and order control in the natural world? The artist works collaboratively with a range of scientists and mathematicians in order to explore and further understand this field, and is interested in the role of the artist in a scientific collaboration. Is it possible for the artist to help produce new science and not just art?